He doesn’t. Not exactly. But at the end of each day, he pats me on the back and says, “Not bad, Mr. Not Really.” And I feel proud.
But then it’s the last day and I know it’s over, because instead of saying “not bad,” Faruk says “good work,” and thanks me.
And that’s it. Next week, Amisha and the principles are packing for Abu Dhabi where they will shoot the final scenes of the film. And me? Yesterday I got a text from Tasha. She and Nash and Jules are in Goa. I’m invited to go with them. But I won’t.
I have a couple more weeks here. And I’m spending them with my mother.
My first night back at the Bombay Royale, I get in late. Chaudhary is snoring behind the desk, so I take the stairs up to the fifth floor rather than wake him. Yael has left the door propped open, but she’s also asleep when I get in. I’m both relieved and disappointed. We haven’t really spoken since that day at the clinic. I don’t quite know what to expect between us. Have things changed? Do we speak a common language now?
The next morning she shakes me awake.
“Hey,” I say, blinking my eyes.
“Hey,” she says back, almost shyly. “I wanted to know, before I leave for work, if you wanted to join me tonight for a Seder. It’s the first night of Passover.”
I almost think she’s joking. When I was growing up, we only celebrated the secular holidays. New Year’s. Queen’s Day. We never once had a Seder. I didn’t even know what they were until Saba started visiting and told me about all the holidays he celebrated, that Yael used to celebrate when she was a child.
“Since when do you go to Seders?” I ask. My question is hesitant, because the mere asking of it touches on the tender spot of her childhood.
“Two years now,” she answers. “There’s an American family that started a school near the clinic, and they wanted to have one last year and I was the only Jew they knew, so they begged me to come, because they said they’d feel funny having one without a Jew.”
“They’re not Jewish then?”
“No. They’re Christians. Missionaries, even.”
“You’re kidding?”
She shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “I have discovered that no one likes a Jewish holiday quite like a Christian fundamentalist.” She laughs, and I can’t remember the last time I heard her do that. “There might be a Catholic nun there, too.”
“A nun? This is starting to sound like one of Uncle Daniel’s jokes. A nun and a missionary walk into a Seder.”
“You need three. A nun, a missionary, and an imam walk into a Seder,” Yael says.
Imam. I think of the Muslim girls in Paris, and I’m reminded, again, of Lulu. “She was Jewish, too,” I say. “My American girl.”
Yael’s eyebrows go up. “Really?”
I nod.
Yael raises her hands into the air. “Well, maybe she’s having her own Seder tonight.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but as soon as she says it, I get a strange feeling that it’s true. And for a second, even with those two oceans and everything else between us, Lulu doesn’t feel quite so far away.
Thirty-one
The Donnellys, the family hosting tonight’s Seder, live in a large sprawling white stucco house with a makeshift soccer pitch out front. When we arrive, several blond people spill out the front door, including three boys who Yael has told me she can’t tell apart. I can see why. Aside from their height, they are identical, all tousled hair and gangly limbs and knobby Adam’s apples. “One’s Declan, one’s Matthew, and the little one, I think, is Lucas,” Yael says, not so helpfully.
The tallest one bounces a soccer ball in his hand. “Time for a quick game?” he asks.
“Don’t get too muddy, Dec,” the blonde woman says. She smiles. “Hi, Willem. I’m Kelsey. This is Sister Karenna,” she says, gesturing to a weathered old smiling woman in a full Catholic habit.
“Welcome, welcome,” the nun says.
“And I’m Paul,” a mustached man in a Hawaiian shirt says, bundling me into a hug. “And you look just like your mama.”
Yael and I stare at each other. No one ever says that.
“It’s in the eyes,” Paul says. He turns to Yael. “You hear about the cholera outbreak in the Dharavi slum?”